Metacentricities

Update: Welcome readers from Slate. Have a cup of coffee, stay a while …

As I said, one of the things I am interested in is the ways in which religion and politics plays out in the US. There has been quite the blog storm about the speech Barak Obama gave a few days ago, at Pentecost 2006: Building a Covenant for a New America conference.

I read the full speech, which you can find on Street Prophets. It’s really interesting, in a variety of ways. One of the most important things is context. He was giving this talk to a group of religious (I believe primarily Christian) progressives. The conference was co-sponsored by Sojourners, which is an explicitly Christian organization, and Call to Renewal is a group of churches and faith based organizations working on poverty issues. So he was speaking to people that are religious, and care deeply about religion, as well as progressive. I think it’s important to take these words in context.

The progressive response to this speech is exemplified by Chris Bowers, who says:

Obama has not only helped close the triangle on the notion that Democrats are hostile to religion, he has closed the triangle on who Democrats should appeal to in order to win elections. This danger of this is that in a nation where the only voters who matter to both parties are conservative evangelicals, then the only legislation we will ever get will be of the sort that appeals to conservative evangelicals. This will be the case no matter which party is in charge of Congress. Thus, closing the triangle on electoral strategy in this manner completely obliterates progressivism itself.

In other words, what Obama has done is to say that Republicans were right all along, Democrats are hostile to people of faith. And, fully, that he is indicating that Democrats should only be focusing their efforts on Evangelical voters. Daily Kos says:

Today Sen. Barack Obama inexplicably attacked his Democratic colleagues
in a contorted speech about religion, accusing them of failing to,
"acknowledge the power of faith in the lives of the American people."
Portraying his own Democratic party as atheists unwilling to court
evangelicals and other churchgoers …

But, there are other voices. One blogger says:

If you read the whole speech, the almost kneejerk response to Obama pretty much illustrates his point of the discomfort by some progressives in any discussion of religion in the public square.

So, let’s look at the speech. Obama starts out with:

But today I’d like to talk about the connection between religion and politics and perhaps offer some thoughts about how we can sort through some of the often bitter arguments over this issue over the last several years.

I do so because, as you all know, we can affirm the importance of poverty in the Bible and discuss the religious call to environmental stewardship all we want, but it won’t have an impact if we don’t tackle head-on the mutual suspicion that sometimes exists between religious America and secular America.

Now, there are a number of ways to read this. You can read it is "secular=progressive" "religious=conservative". If you do that, then, sure, what he is saying might be then construed to mean that "Democrats are hostile to religion". But keep reading. His first example is about his own campaign against Alan Keyes. He talks about how Alan Keyes was, at the end of the campaign, basically saying that Obama was not a true Christian. And Obama was encouraged by his supporters not to entertain his arguments. But, Obama is a Christian, and so, as he said:

What they didn’t understand, however, was that I had to take him seriously. For he claimed to speak for my religion - he claimed knowledge of certain truths.

…

What would my supporters have me say? That a literalist reading of the Bible was folly? That Mr. Keyes, a Roman Catholic, should ignore the teachings of the Pope?

Unwilling to go there, I answered with the typically liberal response in some debates - namely, that we live in a pluralistic society, that I can’t impose my religious views on another, that I was running to be the U.S. Senator of Illinois and not the Minister of Illinois.

But Mr. Keyes implicit accusation that I was not a true Christian nagged at me, and I was also aware that my answer didn’t adequately address the role my faith has in guiding my own values and beliefs.

And, of course, it makes perfect sense that he felt the need to use the "typically liberal response" but felt that inadequate. Had I been running, I’d feel the same. Then, this, I think is the key paragraph:

Democrats, for the most part, have taken the bait. At best, we may try to avoid the conversation about religious values altogether, fearful of offending anyone and claiming that - regardless of our personal beliefs - constitutional principles tie our hands. At worst, some liberals dismiss religion in the public square as inherently irrational or intolerant, insisting on a caricature of religious Americans that paints them as fanatical, or thinking that the very word "Christian" describes one’s political opponents, not people of faith.

He then talks about how religious people in the US are, and a bit of his own faith journey. He then returns to the issue at hand:

… if we truly hope to speak to people where they’re at - to communicate our hopes and values in a way that’s relevant to their own - we cannot abandon the field of religious discourse.

Because when we ignore the debate about what it means to be a good Christian or Muslim or Jew; when we discuss religion only in the negative sense of where or how it should not be practiced, rather than in the positive sense of what it tells us about our obligations towards one another; when we shy away from religious venues and religious broadcasts because we assume that we will be unwelcome - others will fill the vacuum, those with the most insular views of faith, or those who cynically use religion to justify partisan ends.

In other words, if we don’t reach out to evangelical Christians and other religious Americans and tell them what we stand for, Jerry Falwell’s and Pat Robertson’s will continue to hold sway.

This paragraph is, I think probably the paragraph that most upsets progressives. This might have been what the Kos post was speaking about, but it’s hard to see how Obama’s words could be construed that way. What you do with that statement is key. I think most progressives might take this to mean that Obama thinks that perhaps the Dems should backpedal on issues like abortion or gay rights. And this is symptomatic of the problem: the right has so successfully framed the terms of the debate, that talking about religious issues and values means these hot button issues. But I actually think that what Obama is doing is trying to get us out of that framing. He continues by talking about the kinds of ways we can do this.

He then goes into a great example of how problematic some kinds of rhetoric can be. He received a letter from someone who is finds abortion problematic, and he felt that the rhetoric about choice on Obama’s website about this issue was not fair-minded. He then changed the text on his website. This could possibly be used to suggest that he is backpedalling on choice. But I’d say it means that he is being more thoughtful and less inflammatory in his rhetoric (things I talk about frequently.) He then ends the speech with:

It is a prayer I still say for America today - a hope that we can live with one another in a way that reconciles the beliefs of each with the good of all. It’s a prayer worth praying, and a conversation worth having in this country in the months and years to come. Thank you.

In the end, I think that this is very positive. He is right, most people in this country have some sort of faith, and Republicans have exploited this to forward thier basically immoral agenda. He’s not saying, and I’m not saying that we need to do the same. What he is saying, and I agree, is that politics and religion do mix, and we (that is, progressives) ignore that at our own peril. Does this mean that we have to be conscious of the separation of church and state? Youbetcha. But it’s time to talk about what our values are, and all of the variety of places, whether it be Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, or secular humanism, where we get those values.

technorati tags:obama, democrats, politics, faith, progressive, religion

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